Passing Glances
by lisa316
Summary: A collection of snippets, drabbles, and very short stories. One new snippet this month featuring Alec and Rachael.
1. Out With the Old

_author's note:_

_This story is the result of the "spring cleaning" snippet challenge at Blah Blah Woof Woof, but it grew a little past snippet size, and since I've been wanting to start collecting all my snippets in one place anyway, I figured this would be a good way to begin. This story takes place immediately after_ Heat.

**Out With the Old**

Max walked in from a long day delivering packages to be greeted by the sight of her beloved motorcycle, completely buried under a pile of crap.

"Kendra!" she screamed as she pulled the myriad of junk that was strewn across the handlebars and piled on the seat of her bike onto the floor. Three large t-shirts, a jacket, a pairs of jeans, and a belt landed in an unceremonious heap. Max then kicked the offending pile of clothing further away from her bike, as though its proximity offended the delicate piece of engineering that she doted on so well.

"Oh hey, Max," Kendra answered as she emerged from the bedroom with a pair of men's boxer shorts, a baseball cap, and a lone black sock dangling from her fingertips. She tossed them onto the pile that Max had created. "You're home early."

"Kendra, I'm not even going to ask you why you always feel the need to use my bike as a clothes hanger; I'm just going to take this opportunity to remind you that as far as roommates go, you're replaceable, the bike's not!"

"Oh, don't be so uptight," Kendra said, completely unfazed by the daggers Max was shooting from her eyes. "Anyway, I'm glad you're home. We need to go sort through your closet."

"Huh?"

"This guy down the street opened a used clothing store. Well, it's more of a shack, I guess…but he's paying cash for old clothes. So I started to do a little spring cleaning, looking for clothes and things I didn't want anymore, and I found this whole pile of stuff to go trade in."

"These are mostly men's things," Max said, poking her toe into the pile to see what her roommate planned to get rid of.

"Well, yeah. Why would I want to save a bunch of old men's clothes?" Kendra asked, perplexed.

"And why do you have all these men's clothes in the first place?"

"Guys just leave stuff. After awhile it just sort of builds up, you know? So we need to go through your closet and see what's there, and then we can go sell it. I bet Darren left tons of stuff behind," Kendra said, already disappearing into Max's bedroom. "He always struck me as the kind of man who never knew where he dropped his pants."

Kendra sorted through Max's things, searching for anything that looked unwanted or masculine. She did manage to unearth an old shirts and pair of boxer shorts that Darren had left behind, but Max had already used them to wash and polish her motorcycle long ago, so they were way beyond salvage. Kendra was filled with sympathy for Max's boring sex life and was about to give up when she stumbled on a navy blue fleece jacket that was decidedly _not_ Max's. "And who did this originally belong to?" she asked, smirking and holding it up for Max's inspection.

"Just this guy named Logan. He doesn't even know I took it."

Max had taken the jacket two weeks ago.

She still wasn't sure why she went back to Logan's in the first place. The guy had survived, she already knew that much. What did she care how he was handling things? It was his own damn fault he got shot in the first place. Rich guys like him weren't supposed to run in front of bullets, they were supposed to get hired muscle to run in front of bullets for them while they sipped tea with the queen or whatever the hell rich people did. But not Logan Cale, original bleeding heart and friend of the unwashed masses. No, he had to go out there and get his ass shot off for some strangers who never did anything for him.

But then he had to go and use that word. "I need you to do some legwork for me." **Leg-work**. Because _his_ legs didn't work…because he got shot up…because _she_ didn't help him when he asked her to, and the last thing in the world she needed was this pain in the ass making her feel guilty for something that wasn't her fault or her problem.

And then he asked her to go pick up a file for him, something about people getting smuggled into Canada. Only it wasn't lying around on top of somebody's desk, it was locked up at the custom's office, and it would have been no big deal if the guard had stayed where he was supposed to be, but of course he hadn't. So Max had to hide out on the roof until the guy left, and she had been stuck out in the rain. When she had returned to Logan's apartment three hours later she was soaking wet and less then pleased with their new business arrangement.

She had been much colder and wetter doing training exercises back at Manticore. Hell, she had been colder and wetter delivering packages for Normal on a bad day, but she wasn't used to suffering for nothing, and when Logan had told her to come back the next week to do something else about that smuggling thing, she was more than a little pissed off. Only the promise of information about her siblings had been enough to get her to agree to this arrangement, but she had still swiped his jacket on the way out the door in minor retaliation. She was cold, she was wet, it was his fault, he owed her. _Quid pro quo_.

He had sure come through for her though. In only two weeks, he had actually found Hannah. That was more than her shyster P.I. had managed to do in two years. He might be able to find Zack and the others for her too. Add to that the minor consideration that he had totally saved her ass from Lydecker, and this guy Logan had jumped up a few notches in her book. She could pull some B&E jobs in exchange for that.

And as much as she hated to admit it, it was sort of fun. It had been a long time since anything was a challenge for her. She was still all about living below the radar, she wasn't stupid, but the occasional mission would keep her skills sharp, and it didn't totally suck doing things to help other people. And Logan had the money and the information that would make it worth her while. The fact that she liked the way he looked at her didn't influence her at all. At least, not that much.

"It's new," Kendra continued, "we could probably get a few bucks for it. Want to toss it on the pile?"

Max took the jacket from Kendra and reexamined it. It was fairly new. It was also soft and warm, and it smelled good. It reminded Max of security, or at least what she imagined security must feel like, and she liked it. She didn't want to toss it onto the pile with all the other abandoned apparel from the one night stands who never came back for them. Max had the feeling that this jacket was different; this jacket's _owner_ was different.

Besides, she could always return it to him as pretence for going over there to get more information.

Or she could just keep it.

"No, I want to hang on to that," Max said as she returned the jacket to a slightly emptier closet.

xxx

_I don't own Dark Angel and nobody has ever offered to pay me for any of this. Thanks for reading. Reviews are always appreciated._


	2. Zack's Smile

_This was written for the Blah Blah Woof Woof "Genuine Zack Smile" snippet challenge._

"A good soldier is constantly aware of possible threat; he anticipates danger and trusts no one. Never forget that you are in enemy territory." The Colonel's voice rang in his Zack's ears. He would never forget the lessons he was taught at Manticore. He had been out for almost two months, but Lydecker's voice was always in his head. They were valuable lessons; they kept him alive, kept him free. But sometimes he was tempted to forget.

He had been sleeping near a park in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho for three days and was about to move on, when his refuge was invaded. A group of boys had taken over a dirt lot. Zack knew he should move on and keep his distance, but he was drawn to their activity and lingered nearby. Their actions were fascinating.

With casual nonchalance, Zack studied their every move. He watched as they paired into opposing squads and hit a ball with a wooden club, threw the club away, and ran in a geometrical pattern, stepping on a discarded jacket or a square of plastic or a textbook at each corner while the other boys whooped and cheered and slapped each other's hands. Zack tried not to appear conspicuous, but he was mesmerized.

"Hey!" a voice called. Zack froze. Being singled out was never good, but he knew that to take flight now would only invite pursuit. He chided himself for not leaving immediately when others showed up to invade his sanctuary. His curiosity would compromise his safety if he wasn't more careful.

"Hey, you wanna play?" the voice yelled at him again. A skinny boy with light brown hair was waving him over.

Zack reminded himself that there was no real threat and took a few steps closer.

"Come on, we need another guy on our side to make it fair."

"No way," said a taller, heavier boywith red hair and an equal amount of freckles and dirt on his face. "You can't just invite anybody onto our side. What if he sucks? He's just some weird kid who keeps staring at us."

"Dude, don't be such a dick," the boy with the brown hair said to the redhead. "If he wants to play, let him play." He walked up to Zack and handed him the wooden club. "Come on, you can be up next." Zack wrestled with his inner conscious for a moment, but he rationalized to himself that he would stand out less if he joined into the crowd and gave in to temptation, taking the bat and standing beside the plastic square where he had seen others take the club and wait.

A tall boy with a hat wound his arm around and threw the ball at him. Zack estimated the ball's speed to be 60 mph with a backspin rate of 1500 rpm. He stood back and watched as another boy caught it, and someone yelled the word "strike". The boy with the hat wound his arm and threw again. Zack watched it fly past him as he calculated the standard least-squared fitting procedures to extract the initial parameters of the trajectory and to determine the lift and drag coefficients. A voice yelled "strike" again.

"This guy's scared of the ball, he won't even take a swing," screamed the red haired boy. Zack felt a twitch in his hand, wishing to snap the boy's neck below the second vertebrae, but he reminded himself that it would be strategically disadvantageous to his cover to do so. Instead, Zack distracted himself by formulating the optimum swing angle, force, and trajectory to create the aerodynamic lift that would maximize the ball's projected distance, and he swung, knocking the ball all the way across the field.

Zack remembered to keep his running speed below 5 mph as he made his way around the geometric perimeter. The other boys were cheering and clapping, and as he returned to the spot where he had hit the ball, one of the boys held his hand out towards him. Zack touched the boy's palm with his own, and he smiled.


	3. Rosemary

_This was the first snippet challenge response written for Blah Blah Woof Woof, and the prompt was 'food' because, well, when we're not talking about fic, we're usually talking about food, and it was nice to be able to combine the two. Also, many apologies to those on my e-mail alert list. I had a hard time getting the first two chapters uploaded on account of technical difficulties and me being very stupid._

**Rosemary**

He could smell it before he could see it. Once he caught on to that strong, fragrant aroma, he didn't have any trouble following it to the source, even amid all the bustling crowd and varied offerings of the Public Market. He carefully navigated his way down the aisle until he located the correct vendor and found the origin of the smell. Rosemary. A little booth had been set up selling assorted herbs and vegetables, and there was a shelf lined with little plastic pots, each containing a small rosemary plant, struggling to grow and survive.

He remembered the last time he had smelled fresh rosemary. He had used it in a dinner that he had prepared almost two months ago, the last meal he had made before he was shot, a dish that he had put extra effort into in case an unexpected visitor dropped in.

His beautiful, mysterious dinner guest appeared that night, but it hadn't gone as he had hoped. She didn't stay. He spent long days and nights in the hospital dwelling on what he should have done differently, what he should have said, what he should have promised. But he had played it poorly, hadn't said the right things or offered enough, and she had left. And it had all gone terribly, terribly wrong from there.

He wished she would have stayed for dinner-for so many different reasons.

He thought of her often, amid the aftermath and the recovery and the readjustment. He remembered her face, smirking in the light of his flashlight, and the way her dark eyes had practically dared him to make a move. He wondered if he would ever see her again. _Someone_ had pushed him out of that hospital room. He didn't need proof or witnesses, he just knew it was her. Just as he knew one day she would appear again. He hoped, anyway. He hoped frequently.

On impulse, he bought a little rosemary plant.


	4. The Twinkie Defense

_Originally written for the "Twinkie Defense" prompt at Blah Blah Woof Woof. If you've never heard of it before, you can find an explanation at Wikipedia…_

**The Twinkie Defense**

I hate to admit it, and I would never say it out loud, but there's just no getting around it…Logan is hot. Really hot.

I like his eyes. He has nice eyes, very expressive. Potent. When he looks you, he's really looking at you, you know?

He has a sexy little smile, too. Like he knows what you're thinking about; he understands your game and he's willing to play along. It's a dangerous smile, too much like an invitation.

And that stubble! Damn! Who knew that a boy could look so good just by passing on the razor for a couple of days? He probably does that on purpose, it looks too good to be a coincidence.

That voice, though…that voice is the cherry on top of the sexy cake. His voice is so damn hot it could probably melt rocks. It isn't fair for a man as pretty as that to have a voice that smooth.

And there's something about his hands. I don't know what it is…makes me wonder what he could with those hands…

Let's face it, the whole package is good.

But it's a bad idea to even think about it. Way too many complications involved with hookin' up with a man like that…too many strings, too many issues, too risky. Original Cindy don't swing that way for a reason.

Damn it! That's what happens when you have Twinkies and Coke for lunch, makes you think crazy thoughts about going back to the three legged gender! Boys are nothin' but trouble.

But if any man could ever tempt a sister to switch teams, Logan Cale might be it…

_PS – I suppose if you prefer, you could just insert the name "Alec" where it says "Logan" and it would all still make perfect sense. See? I'm all-shipper friendly!_


	5. Tear

_This was originally written for the AURLCO Nekkid40 Challenge over at LJ. The prompt was 'tear'._

**Tear**

Logan stumbled groggily into his bathroom and turned on his shower. As he waited for the icy water to heat up to a humane temperature, he glanced at his reflection in the mirror.

It wasn't often that he paid any attention to his scars, but he couldn't help but notice that he had picked up quite a few of them since Max fell into his life.

There was the starburst shaped gunshot wound on his back, along with the more meticulous surgeon's scars left over from the multiple operations that followed that incident. He knew that Max still felt guilty over that one, even after all that had happened, but Logan couldn't bring himself to hate it completely anymore, since it was also what made her return to him. She had come back just in the nick of time, it turned out, although it took months to get her to admit that she was the one who had wheeled him out of that hospital room.

Another small scar puckered at his right collarbone where a shard of glass had cut into him as he shattered through a window. That mark was like a trophy for him; it wasn't very often that a man could get thrown off the roof of a building and walk away with one small cut. In a fit of amusement, he once said that the tiny scar was his good luck charm, until he remembered that Max was the source of all the good luck that day.

She had certainly saved his skin more than once. He reflected on how dead he would have been if she hadn't been looking out for him as he considered the small mark at his right wrist where the rope had burned into his arm. Bronk would have killed him for sure that day if it hadn't been for his own personal guardian angel.

Another gunshot scar on his left shoulder courtesy of Lydecker; some scraping along his hip courtesy of a violent and confused "brother" Zack; an acid burn from toxic waste courtesy of Terminal City; his body told the tale of dozens of near misses, most of which Max had saved him from. There was no denying that life was an adventure since she came along.

He took a moment to examine the newest trauma to his body, painfully acquired only an hour earlier. He craned his neck around to get a better look at the eight small tears on his back; eight bright, bloody half moons dug into his flesh, all matching perfectly to Max's fingernails. After he inspected the damages he shrugged, decided he would live, and stepped into the hot shower.

One of these days her overheated feline DNA was going to kill him.


	6. Home Invasion

_This was written for the AURLCO Nekkid40 prompt 'home', and it's pure silliness…_

**Home Invasion**

During his time as a journalist, Logan Cale has seen some strange things: secret government experiments, cross-species genetic manipulation, mind control, things that were hard to explain and even harder to prove. He thought that nothing could faze him at this point in his life, so he took it with considerable grace when half a dozen women showed up at his door with an outrageous story.

At first glance, these women didn't have much in common. Some were young and some were old. Some of them were American while others came from Europe or Asia. They spoke different languages and had varied careers. Some were married with children and some still lived at home with their parents. On the surface, they were very different.

But these women had things in common. They were all intelligent and creative. Each woman understood punctuation rules with remarkable clarity, and they were firm believers in constructive criticism and appropriate feedback. Inexplicably, they also knew about Logan's life-down to the smallest detail. They called themselves 'fangirls'.

They were all from another time.

One of the women, a pretty brunette with a fetish for apples, had the power of destroying functioning technology with her mind. (Logan would never have bought it if he hadn't seen similar phenomena coming out of Manticore's laboratories.) These women had all been using Instant Messenger together back in 2008, before the Microsoft company had gone belly-up. They had been discussing _him_ of all things, although Logan still wasn't sure how that was possible. Apparently their computers heated up to dangerous temperatures. The extreme heat, combined with the apple lover's strange psychic ability, and the loss of one girl's 'e' button had caused a time and fiction warp, catching them all into the loop and hurling them into Seattle, 2020, where they made their way straight to his front door.

At first it had been a pleasant experience. They were like his personal harem, hanging on his every word and granting his wishes before he could even express them. They understood Logan like no one ever had before, and they were all pretty cute too, so he was pleased to have them around.

Then strange things began happening.

Piece by piece, articles of his clothing began to go missing. A pair of pants here, a sweater there, his closet was barer and barer every time he opened it. And there were mishaps. Things spilling all over him, making have too him change his shirt two or three times a day. Clothing ripped all over the place, forcing him to undress. He was constantly caught out in the rain; no matter the weather when he left the house, he always returned soaking wet and in need of a dry shirt.

And the fangirls always seemed to be at the heart of the problem. The apple lover, a lovely German lass, was terribly clumsy and whenever she tripped and fell, she clutched at his shirt and ripped it off every time. The sweet southern yoga enthusiast with the name that constantly eluded him would spatter him with stir-fry oil and salad dressing, always something flammable that needed to be removed immediately. The young Malaysian girl with the devilish smile would back him against the wall or into a corner, and the next thing he knew, his pants would be gone, leaving him standing there and wondering where they went. And the buxom Portlander with the brassy hair (possibly the most perverted of the bunch) managed to cover him in chocolate syrup and whipped cream every time she walked into the room.

Logan soon ran out of shirts altogether.

Food constantly landed on him. He was like a human buffet table. The fangirls would lecture him about wasting food and eat it right off his bare chest. Fondue night was an ordeal.

Violent gangsters would tear the clothes away from Logan's body, sometimes twice a day.

The pants were gone by now too.

He would get left out in the freezing wind and snow, chilled to the bone, and the fangirls would have to warm him up with their body heat. After this happened three days in a row, Logan began to grow suspicious.

He finally couldn't take it anymore; he had to get away. His clothing was completely gone, and he was afraid his health and dignity would soon follow. The cupboards were empty, and he was terrified of what the fangirls would bring home from their next trip to the market. There had been too much talk about wrapping him in marzipan for him to remain calm. Logan Cale finally snapped, running naked down the streets of Seattle while the fangirls watched him with binoculars and smiled.

As Logan raced away amid the admiring glancing of the female population, he knew he would never be able to go home again. Ever.

_That's it for now, but I hope to have some more snippets out soon. If anyone wants to see anything, drop me a comment. I'm happy to take requests. C'mon! Challenge me!_


	7. Dear Penthouse

July, 2008

Written for the JamPonyFic mini ficathon over at LJ. The prompt was "Normal gets too close to Max in heat."

**Penthouse Forum Letter (Rejected)**

Dear Forum,

I always enjoyed your reader's stories, but I never thought anything like that would ever happen to me…until today, that is.

I was at work, where I manage a delivery service. Most of the bike messengers who ride for me are idiots, so I never considered having "a relationship" with any of them, but today something happened that made me want to dip my pen in the company ink, if you know what I mean.

I was sorting out my packages in the back room when this girly-girl that works for me, let's call her "Max", bursts in. She was flushed and sweating and she had this crazy glint in her eye, and before I can say "Return to Sender" she jumps all over me.

Max has always been a pistol, more trouble that she was worth despite the nice caboose, and I always said she had a real mouth on her, but I found out just how much when she shoved her tongue down my throat. She's kissing me like she's trying to swallow my lips and raking her nails down my back like she's a cat in heat or something.

Next thing I know she's ripping my shirt off – and when I say ripping, I mean ripping it to shreds. She tore the thing right off, and that was a strong polyester blend too. The crazy girl shoves me up against the wall and starts working me over like she can't get enough of me, so I figure she's been hot to trot for me for a long time. She stops sucking my face just long enough to pull her shirt off, and WOW! Those knockers were really a special delivery. Talk about your properly inflated tires.

The girl is all over me and moving so fast I can hardly keep up with her. She's working on my belt buckle when her girlfriend (her _lesbian_ girlfriend, so you know where this is going) bursts in and slaps her. Well, I figure if she's into spanking, I'd be happy to help her out, but before I can offer, her friend drags her out of there. I figure I was just a warm up act for them, but now that she's had a taste, I'm sure she'll be back, and in the meantime your readers can imagine what those two were doing to each other after I got her all worked up.

_Reagan R._

_Seattle, WA_


	8. Ice

July, 2008  
This was written for the AURLCO Nekkid40 prompt "Ice"

oOo

"This means you can never leave me now."

Under normal circumstances, those words might have seemed possessive or controlling, but as Max gazed at the ring on her finger, her voice held nothing but wonder and awe. It was a profound thing; a piece of jewelry and a few words were all it took to insure that she would never be alone again.

"I would never leave you anyway," he reminded her, running a light finger up her bare arm and kissing her shoulder.

"But now you can't." She smiled widely, her eyes still fixed on the way the moonlight made the small diamond sparkle.

Where had he even gotten it? They were trapped in a bio-toxic waste dump, short of food and clean water and medical supplies. Only Logan would have been able to pull something like that off, would have somehow managed to call on one of his countless associates to smuggle in a ring. Only Logan would have thought it was important enough, worth the risk and the considerable expense to give her a tangible symbol.

It wasn't large or extravagant, a small gem on a thin gold band, so common her fence probably wouldn't touch it, but as Max continued to gaze tenderly at the way the little diamond sat on her finger, she thought it was the most stunning piece of jewelry in the world.

"We can't tell anyone, Logan; it's not safe yet."

"I know," his low voice assured her as he continued to kiss the back of her shoulder.

"And this probably isn't even legal, what with us being felons and all now."

"I don't care," he whispered into her ear, kissing along the hairline towards the back of her neck in a determined quest to lure her back down to their bed.

A pile of cushions taken off of conference room chairs and covered with a dusty blanket may have been a strange place to spend a wedding night, but for Max and Logan, it was a honeymoon made in heaven, and ever since he awoke to see Max's silhouette, haphazardly draped with the corner of their blanket, her bare skin glowing against the moonlight while she delicately inspected her new ring, Logan wanted nothing more than to tempt her back down to the mattress to claim her all over again. He continued to kiss down her back, between her shoulder blades, as he wrapped his arms around her waist and gently tugged her back into their bed, turning her in his arms to tenderly kiss the front of her neck and collarbone.

"I won't be able to wear this" she sighed, looking longingly at her ring once more. It really wasn't safe. If anyone suspected she and Logan were married, he would become a target, and she had no doubts that the Conclave would come after her through him.

"You can wear it tonight," he reminded her, and he continued to kiss her until she closed her eyes and dropped her hand to rest against his back. But she could still feel its weight on her finger.


	9. Distracted

_December, 2008_

_Written for the DA Halloween Holiday prompts at LiveJournal. The prompt was 'All Alec wants for Christmas is Rachael'._

**Distracted**

They tried to tell themselves that Psy Ops really wasn't so bad…but they knew they were lying. They told themselves that the reorientation process didn't really hurt more than getting injured on a mission, but that was only true if you didn't take into account the damage that they inflicted on your spirit, which hurt so much more than anything they could do to your body. They told themselves that the cells were just as comfortable as the barracks, even though they were mind-numbingly lonely and you could never really relax because you could never know when they were watching you. But they still told themselves that things would be okay, because the line between truth and fiction was blurred when you were in Psy Ops, and all that mattered was making it out with your body and brain in tact, and you told yourself whatever you had to. That's just what it was like in Psy Ops.

He had heard a rumor that it was Christmas Day. Some of the Ordinaries on guard duty had been talking, and someone else had overheard it. It very well could be; Alec had lost track of the days awhile back, but it was probably close to the end of December.

Not like Manticore made a big deal out of Christmas, or any commercial holiday for that matter. They sometimes required a moment of silent reflection on days of military importance, like December 7 or that day in September when the Twin Towers fell, but things like Christmas were nothing but a distraction.

Still, his mind was desperate for some gentle distraction between the interrogations, and it was something to think about.

Rachael probably loved Christmas. It seemed like the sort of thing she would love.

He thought about the necklace, the one he had managed to keep hidden for so long in the hollowed out rubber heel of his boot. It was the only way Alec could think of to keep it hidden and still with him constantly, but it had worked so far. He never dared to take it out, knowing that it would be confiscated immediately if discovered, but he liked knowing it was there. Having a piece of her so close to him made Psy Ops seem a little bit further away.

He would have loved to have seen her at Christmas time. There would have been joy all over her face, and he imagined her wearing red velvet. Her warm presence would protect him from the cold outside, and the light would be soothing and soft, and she would smile at him.

There was so much he wanted to give her.

If he could, he would go back and save her. He would give her her father back. He would give her honesty. He would give her security. He would give her the necklace back, and his fingers would tremble as they brushed against the soft skin of her neck as he fastened the clasp for her. And she would forgive him.

He would give her anything, his loyalty, his protection, his allegiance, he would lay down his life to keep her safe. His very existence all wrapped up in a bow, just for her.

The only thing he wanted from her was one more day. One more day where she loved him.

And it would all be okay, everything would turn out alright, because the line between truth and fiction was blurred when you were in Psy Ops, and all that mattered was making it out with your body and brain in tact, and you told yourself whatever you had to. That's just what it was like in Psy Ops.


End file.
